Anti-poverty Initiatives: Reducing Multidimensional Poverty and Deprivation

Abstract

Poverty is a state of deprivation, especially concerning basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter. However, over the period, the scope of basic necessity has widened enough to include health and education. To measure poverty across the time and regions, a standardization of minimum money income in absolute terms is considered as a poverty line. The World Bank, in 2015, defined a global poverty line at $1.90 a day based on purchasing power parity (PPP) at 2011 prices. The proportion of population earning less than $1.90 is known as the poverty rate or headcount index for the given region or a country. In 2015, about 10% of the world's population was considered to be living in absolute poverty on less than $1.9 a day (World Bank 2019b). Multidimensional poverty attempts to capture acute deprivations faced by an individual across ten elements of human capability, if people are deprived of a third out of ten (weighted) indicators, they are identified as multidimensional poor, and the intensity of their poverty is measured by the percentage of deprivations they are experiencing (OPHI 2019). As in 2017, a massive 23.3% of the global population lived in multidimensional poverty (UNDP 2019).

Universal Basic Incomes versus Targeted Transfers: Anti-Poverty Programs in Developing Countries

“…4 We then define exclusion errors as failing to give benefits to those with household per-capita incomes below y * , and inclusion errors as giving benefits to those with household per-capita incomes above y * . These curves, also known as ROC curves, 5 plot inclusion error on the x-axis and 1 -exclusion error on the y-axis, and trace out the tradeoff between exclusion error and inclusion error obtained by varying the cutoff value c, holding the target poverty level for the program (y * ) fixed. Figure 4A confirms the fundamental tradeoff between inclusion and exclusion error.…”

“…In the Appendix, we compare curves setting y * equal to 0.75× the government's official poverty line, which we call the "extreme poor"; 1.0× the government's official poverty line; and 1.5× the government's official poverty line, or the "near poor." The tradeoff is similar in all three cases 5. ROC stands for "receiver operating characteristic."…”